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Friday, August 12, 2011

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History: Water

I had a Water entry all planned out where I was going to tell you about family trips to Santa Cruz, swim lessons in Minnesota, and my encounter with a past life regressionist who informed me of my fear of water. However, since this is about me and I get to choose, I’m going to instead tell you about our recent trip to the beach in Maine.

To begin, I first have to tell you about our dear friends from Ohio. We met on the internet through a mommies email group of women all pregnant and due the same month as my daughter. Sheri and I bonded. When our girls were five, our families met in Chicago one year and it was almost too good to be true that ALL of us got along. Since then, we’ve shared a family vacation in California, I’ve been to Ohio a couple of times (and brought my daughter with me once!). In our co-genealogy work, we’ve also discovered that we are cousins. My 5-year-old son has dubbed us FUZZINS (they are friends who are also cousins).

This year was another co-family vacation, but in Maine. We rented a beautiful beach house in Kennebunkport, just a short distance from Goose Rocks Beach. The house itself had a nice third story loft area that we decided would be a nice place to banish allow the kids to play. The second floor had two baths, 2 bedrooms with twin beds, a master bedroom and another large room with a queen bed. The bottom floor had a dining room, a kitchen, and living room and a front room. The perfect amount of space for our two families. We were afraid by the description that it was going to be too far from the ocean, but it’s literally right around the corner and we could hear the waves while we were sleeping.

Goose Rocks Beach was also perfect. There were enough people there so that you knew it was fun, but not enough to call it crowded. At low tide, you can walk out to an island that is inaccessible a high tide. There were also several of Signa’s favorite areas where she found hermit crabs, sea snails and other living critters. The waves were gentle enough that Will could play in them, but strong enough that he WOULD play in them. Marc and I even joined our friends in boogie boarding one hot afternoon.

The water was amazing. So different from what I’m used to at the Pacific Ocean’s Santa Cruz beach. It was warmer and clearer. I had never been in an ocean where I could see my feet through the water. Some days the water was colder than others, but all in all, it was definitely warmer. And I definitely liked it that way! I loved lying on the shore and jumping in when I needed to cool off. I loved watching Will frolic in the ocean, punching, jumping and screaming at the waves. I loved seeing Signa run off with Daddy with her empty bucket and come back all smiles with a bucket full of “friends” (that would then die in said bucket throughout the heat of the day…).